NewsQuirks Weirdest of 2003 (758)

The following news stories rank as the weirdest in a truly weird year.

Getting Better All the Time

Since peaking at 6,886 two weeks after the 2001 collapse of the World Trade Center, by October the official death toll had dropped to 2,752. Investigators removed from the list 40 names of people they cannot prove died or ever existed. Remains from only about 1,520 victims have been positively identified.

You've Come the Wrong Way, Baby

Swaziland's King Mswati blamed the world's ills on trousers, specifically women wearing them. "The Bible says curse be unto a woman who wears pants and those who wear their husband's clothes," the monarch declared in a state radio sermon. "That is why the world is in such a state today."

Bye Bye Birdie

During an Australian production of "Johnny Belinda," a chicken appearing in the play collapsed during the opening scene, apparently from stage fright, according to director Ron Hamilton of the St. James Players. Rather than interrupt the drama by having someone walk on and collect the bird, the stage crew used a string that had been tied to its leg to keep it from straying to drag it slowly offstage.

The Last Word

Catholic Archbishop John J. Myers of Newark, N.J., banned eulogies during funeral masses. He said the personal tributes were getting out of hand, some lasting more than an hour.

Curses, Foiled Again

Police in Cinnaminson, N.J., charged armored-car guard Perry D. Vedder, 32, with stealing more than $400,000 in cash from the branch office where he worked after he arrived for work the next day driving a 2000 Chevrolet Corvette.

David A. Hughes, 27, was charged with robbing a bank in Knoxville, Tenn., after he tried to make his getaway but apparently became confused by the maze of nearby roads. Police arrested Hughes about 45 minutes after the heist when they found his car circling the parking lot behind the bank.

Police in Aurora, Ill., accused Shane C. Spooner, 28, of holding up the same convenience store four times in May. Besides robbing the store repeatedly, he didn't wear a mask, hastening identification. Noting that Spencer lives less than half a mile from the store, Aurora police representative Dan Ferrelli said, "He may have been looking to give a whole new meaning to the word 'convenience.'"

Police in Neillsville, Wis., accused Joel D. Peterson, 30, of trying to rob a pharmacy by pretending his index finger was the barrel of a gun. Instead of keeping his hand in his pocket, however, the would-be robber held up his gloved hand and pointed his finger with his thumb extended like the cocked hammer of a pistol.

A man who tried to rob a Fourth of July fireworks stand in Las Vegas, Nev., apparently failed to notice that the city police department sponsored the booth. When he showed a gun and demanded money, an off-duty officer staffing the booth with his wife pulled his own gun and shot the gunman dead.

Sandra Grice, 37, tried to stage her own death in Marion, S.C., by digging up a skeleton from a cemetery, putting it in her car, then setting the car on fire so she wouldn't have to appear in court on federal drug charges. The scheme failed when the flames went out soon after Grice left the scene because she had closed the car doors and rolled up the windows, depriving the fire of oxygen and exposing the ruse.

Jonathan Rodriguez, 17, Daniel Cote, 19, and Joseph Denham, 18, tried to invade a home near Newport, Del., but fled, police said, when Rodriguez pounded on the door with the butt of a handgun and shot himself in the groin.

Jeremy Lepianka, 22, and Donald Sebastian, 54, were arrested within a month of each other, Lepianka for impersonating a sheriff's deputy in Syracuse, N.Y., and Sebastian, 54, for pretending to be a U.S. marshal in Strongsville, Ohio. In both cases, the men's ruses were discovered when they made traffic stops and called the real authorities for backup.